of things in a certain way--i mean, the human element, in a fresh way without dredging up a lot of cliches. c-span: where do you live now, by the way? >> guest: right now, i'm a visiting writer in residence at memphis, university of memphis. c-span: memphis university? >> guest: yes. c-span: when did you first know that you liked writing? >> guest: well, as i say, in high school, i was writing science fiction. i was--excuse me... c-span: so in school itself? >> guest: yeah. well, it was something i just did. i never thought of it as a profession or even a trade. i just sort of did it and... c-span: did you ever have a point where a teacher came up and said, 'randall, this is good'? >> guest: actually, my teachers were fairly critical of my writing up to a point. i--really, it was in college when i started taking it a little more seriously and--i mean, i--again, i'd been writing very, you know, pitiful stories and i fell under the tutorship of one max steele, who was a--the--ran the writing program at chapel hill for a long time, and he challenged a lot of my ideas about taste and source ma